The subject matter of the present invention is a hair treatment composition, which is useable as a hair rinse or especially as a leave-in hair care composition, which is in the form of a pearlescent product and which contains a certain associative thickener, cationic hair care ingredients and certain pearlescence or turbidity-inducing agents.
Conventional hair conditioning preparations, such as rinse-off care compositions or leave-on hair treatment agents, are usually formulated on the basis of aqueous emulsions. Cation-active substances, especially fatty alcohol, emulsifiers, and additional specific active and perfume materials, are essential ingredients. The most important ingredients are cationic surfactants, fatty alcohol and emulsifiers. The preparations appear milk white and can contain pearlescence agents in order to improve the pearlescence effect. A review of the principal composition of care rinses and hair care compositions is given by Schrader, in “Grundlagen und Rezepturen der Kosmetika{Foundations and Formulations of Cosmetics}”, 2nd Edition, 1989, pp. 728 to 737. The principal purposes of conditioning agents are the improvement of the stylability, the combability, the luster and the feel of the treated hair.
The known emulsion-form hair care compositions based on cationic surfactants and fatty alcohol have production engineering problems. The solid fatty alcohol usually must be melted and emulsified at elevated temperatures. The manufacturing and cooling processes have a considerable influence on the product quality, especially the product consistency and the quality of the pearlescence effect. The pearlescence effect strongly depends on the course of the temperature during cooling. In the cooling phase the product passes through a visco-elastic state and problems due to crystallizing out can occur at elevated temperatures. However the course of the temperature during cooling is frequently unpredictable and very difficult to reproduce in a controlled manner. The result is that there are considerable fluctuations in the emulsion stability, viscosity and pearlescence effect during production and many production runs are not satisfactory. Subsequent thickening is usually not possible.